My Work Tarting Up Other Places

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Today we bring you a lesson in the art of pleasuring a female orally. Or, as it is more formally called, "cunnilingus." (Though it is Most CertainlyNotcalled cunnilingus by anyoneI know--even at the most formal of occasions. Cunnilingus is a displeasing word, made all the more displeasing by the prominent "ling" sound right there in the middle of the word, forcing anyone who says it aloud into making an involuntary suggestive flick of the tongue.)

Our instructor in the art of, well, you know, is a lively, sassy Brit, The Barreness, who writes the equally lively and sassy blog Hello, Sailor. I urge you, using my highest possible words of urging, to check it out immediately. At the very least read Meet the Barreness, an intro to the Barreness worldview. But you're here for cunnilingus talk. Let us cede to the Barreness:

Greetings Chaps and Chapesses.As you might have guessed, today's topic is an educational one, its necessity brought into rather glaring focus for me throughout the recent audition process.As it turns out, despite machinations and unsubstantiated claims to the contrary,nearly every man I meet, infuriatinglymost men lots of men areabsolutely bloody cluelessabout how to give good head.

The article features an interview with Gail Dines, author of Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality, in which she "traces the history of the porn industry from Playboy and Penthouse, to today's brutal fare than resembles nothing less than the videotaped sexual assault of women." Dines says that today's porn is vicious, it's everywhere, readily available, and it's ruining our ability to have intimate relationships.

Dines isn't just some uptight lady revisiting the old "porn is bad for women" arguments and picking out the worst porn to support her points. She studied the most mainstream, freely available porn--the idea being that she would look at whatever would be available to the average 11 year old kid trolling for porn on the Internet. (Kids these days have it so easy. Why, in my day, we had to do serious reconnaissance to find a local dad's Playboys.)

Here is a sample of the opening text of a typical mainstream porn site Hines found:

Do you know what we say to things like romance and foreplay? We say fuck off! This is not another site with half-erect weenies trying to impress bold sluts. We take gorgeous young bitches and do what every man would REALLY like to do. We make them gag till their makeup starts running, and then they get all other holes sore -- vaginal, anal, double penetrations, anything brutal involving a cock and an orifice. And then we give them the sticky bath.

Okay. Yes, it's fantasy, not reality. Yes, it's just sex. And, yes, it's porn, for fuck's sake--of course it's supposed to be nasty. And yet... As much as it's fantasy and not real life, media porn does give people some sort of guideline for what sex looks like. Is this really how we want to instruct our young people (and ourselves, for that matter) in how to enjoy each other?

In the interest in pure journalism (and, okay, fine, some prurient interest), I googled "porn." Here's some of the available fare today on the top hit, PornHub: "Now Be A Good Bitch...", "Busty Brunette Gets Her Ass Nailed!" and "Three Guys Fuck the Blonde Whore." I watched "Three Guys Fuck the Blonde Whore." [An aside: I actually have a degree in film studies (you got to watch movies in class!), and it's all come to this. Sorry, Professor Bauland.] Besides some really really bad acting by the actress who scored the highly coveted role of "Whore"--at one point, her "passion" closely resembled "giving birth to twins"--there didn't seem to be anything super-offensive. I might prefer it was called "Woman Enjoys A Tryst With Three Attentive Gentlemen" or something, but that's just semantics.

What was striking to me was the lack of variety. Oh sure, there are your Asian chicks, MILFs, barely legals and the like, but the general tone is that the women are all "sluts" who need some jackhammer pounding. Whatever, that's fine enough, but that's the only choice. By focusing on only one form of sex--faceless man bones over-emoting slut--we miss out on the 8 billion other forms that sex can take. Where's the joyful, the transcendent or the deliciously slow sex? Where's the sex where the participants are overcome by passion--or at least glance at each other with slight friendliness?

I'm not such a girlie girl that I need a lengthy backstory involving Scottish Highlanders and a lost family secret or something, but some sort of recognizable human emotion would be nice. To that end, I turned to Good Vibrations thinking they, being female-friendly, progressive and all that, might have something more appealing. I found a movie called Matinee. Here's the description:

Two theatre actors who play onstage lovers without much zing -- until one critical peformance, when they decide to improvise. The results will thrill you as much as they do the Matinee audience who watches them really begin to make love. Bridging the gap between indy art film and sex film, this plot-driven, scripted mini-featurette by US-born, Amsterdam-based filmmaker Jennifer Lyon Bell features real actors performing their first-ever explicit scene, not porn performers, and the result is smart, nuanced, and oh-so-sexy.

"Smart,""nuanced," "Indy art film"? I'm all over that (see above, admission of film degree). So I am just going to order the damn thing to figure out if I'm just an uptight prig who thinks mainstream porn is kind of lame, or if most porn actually is kind of lame and I just seek a higher quality product. (see again: film degree, connection with pretentiousness).

If you want to watch along with me (not literally, I have enough weirdos sending me poorly worded invitations to meet up with them), click on this link or the picture at the end of the post to order the movie. (It's $29.95 but don't forget, if you're a new customer, use the coupon code GV15OFF to get 15% off.) We can reconvene in a couple weeks and discuss it.

In the meantime, what do you think of porn? Do you watch it? Do you shun it? If so, why? Have you found porn that's sexy? Tell me what you think. Just not in person.

Friday, September 17, 2010

Last night, as I am wont to do, I was looking up the Google search terms people use to find In Bed With Married Women. This was suitably pleasing, as always. I saw the weird search terms ("how to make fursuit penises"), the weirder ("wifes first attempt at fucking a dog") and the blunt ("BOOBAGE"). And, as usual, plenty of requests for "nacked" women, but the one that stood out to me was "looking at anus." "Looking at anus." It was enigmatic--what did that person even want? Why "looking at anus" instead of a more obvious choice such as "photos of anus" or "anus pictures"? Were they interested in looking at anus themselves, or did they want to see a picture of someone else looking at anus?

I remarked on this to my husband, who idly wondered many Google pages Mr. Looking at Anus had to go through before In Bed With Married Women popped up. (It could, I suppose, be Mrs. Looking at Anus. Or more likely was just her name through marriage...) Well, there was nothing to do but type in "looking at anus" myself to find out. To my surprise and horror, In Bed With Married Women is the number two hit. That's right, if you want "looking at anus," apparently In Bed With Married Women is the place to be. It sits there above the #3 hit, a HealthBoards post involving an "ulcer looking sore inbetween scrotum and anus" and the #1 hit, a collegehumor.com headline reading, "The most realistic chocolate anus we've ever seen." And this point, my search history was a slutty, ravaged mess anyway, so I clicked through to discover that there is a company in England that sells chocolate anuses (ani?) in three flavors. On their site, they take great pains to inform the customer of the high quality of their chocolate anuses, noting darkly, "unlike some other unscrupulous novelty shops who get their chocolates made in China."

For us, making chocolate is an art, which is why we only produce traditional hand made chocolate of the highest standard. We also believe the anus range can dissolve cultural boundaries of race, gender, and sexual orientation.

It's a little high-fallutin'-- it is a chocolate butt, after all. Still, if chocolate butts can ease race relations, break down sexual stereotypes and whatnot, I'm all for it. I am concerned, however, that they might have trouble finding an ample customer base. In a famous(ish) experiment by Paul Rozin, he presented subjects with fudge formed into a realistic likeness of dog poo. Although the subjects knew intellectually that the fudge was just plain old fudge, most of them couldn't bring themselves to eat it. (And most, I imagine, were also wondering why the hell this weird research guy kept insisting they try the dog poo-shaped fudge.) Anus is somewhat higher on the edibility scale than dog poo, but to most people, I'm guessing, not quite enough higher.

Anyway, all this has nothing to do with married women, sex or even beds. But maybe that's okay. Maybe I'll just follow the advice of one anonymous In Bed commenter who suggested,

Hmm... If it's pageviews you're after, meebee you should add those misspellings / unfortunate phrases to your metadata. You'll get the number one search ranking for "hair of penice" in no time.

I don't actually know what "metadata" is, but when I find out, I just might do it. So if you're in need of top-notch, high-quality info on your penice, giving hand jops, being nacked or, of course, our specialty, looking at anus, we'll be here to meet your needs.

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Today’s True Wife's Tale takes you into the bedroom of Laura and David, married twelve years. Their issue is different sex drives. He wants it, she...not so much, or at least, not so frequently. It’s probably also germane to note that outside of the bedroom, Laura is generally “the decider” in the relationship. She is a very busy exec in the movie industry and David is a custom furniture maker who works at home.

Sometimes David and Laura reach a happy détente on how and when they’ll have sex, other times their differences threaten the marriage. When I interviewed Laura she said, “I’ll be curious how we compare to the other people you talk to because my husband always thinks that we’re broken. He told me he’s concerned this might be the end of our marriage. That broke my heart.”

Laura's solution to this dilemma? Make a deal with David (she is a movie exec, after all). If he wants sex--really really wants it--she will agree, with no complaint. The thing is, he doesn't just want sex, as in, a quickie, he wants sex as in "making love," as in lots of time spent on the act, orgasms (non-fake) had by all, etc... Does this agreement charge up their sex lives, or does Laura get fed up and renege on the deal? Well, you'll just have to read below and find out now, won't you?

And while I'm being all bossy, here are some questions for you:
--How do you handle it when one person wants sex and the other doesn't?
--Do different levels of desire cause problems in your relationship?

(True Wife's Tales are an In Bed With Married Women continuing series in which women tell the damn truth about their sex life, no matter how embarrassing, non-existent, hot or enviable it may be. If you'd like to tell your story, click here.)

In Bed With Married Women: How’s your sex life these days?

Laura: Our sex life is, in my opinion, just fine. We have it on average, two to three times per week. In

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

"Afternoon Delight" isn't just the name of a really bad song, it's also the name of today's exciting In Bed With Married Women prize. The Afternoon Delight Kit from Good Vibrations (clearly there are kits for absolutely everything these days) contains all sorts of girlie treats. To win its bounty: click on the link (here it is again), then be the first to come back here and correctly identify one of the items in the kit. You can answer as a comment below or, if you don't want the whole world knowing that you spend your days trolling the Internet for free marital aids, drop us a quick e-mail.

(Note: Just so you know, when you order from Good Vibrations, they don't send your stuff in a see-through box with "Here's your weird-ass stuff, you big ol' perv" scrawled all over it. It's just an innocuous-looking package with a plain, vaguely British-sounding return address like Barnaby Limited or something like that. No one will be the wiser about your penchant for his n' her butt plugs, falconer's gear or whatever it is that floats your sexual boat.)

Monday, September 13, 2010

Hmm... Soft-looking, pliable, nubby. Possibly good to chew on? Should you toss it to your dog for a quick round of tug-of-war? Or is it something sexy that you should immediately stick on your wang? Thus are the weighty philosophical questions pondered in Guy Cimbalo's "Sex Toy or Dog Toy?" on the Smoking Jacket. In it, he asks the age old question: Throw it to the dog or stick it up my bum?

Here's a quick sample:

1. Sex toy or dog toy?

Could be some sort of fun Frisbee kind of thing... Could be some sort of double hole plugger thing to share with that special someone...

2. Here's another one:

Silly face caterpillar chew toy? Or something that, if used properly, does not seem so great to chew on--not at all?

Have you filled out your answer sheets? Okay, then, here the results: 1. dog toy. 2. sex toy. If you want to play more, here's the link again.

P.S. It is just dawning on me that if I am hoping to bring in more than $1.47 peddling sex toys on this blog, it is probably not the best financial strategy to be constantly making fun of said sex toys. So in a last-minute attempt to cut my losses, I will tell you that the first item pictured above is the O-Joy Stimulating Cock Ring and available through the link from delightful frank and open sex toy company Good Vibrations. It's only 8 bucks and, for you, because you're so very very attractive, I can offer you 15% off your first online order. Just enter the coupon code: GV15OFF. Plus, if it doesn't work as a sex toy, your dog--or possibly a teething baby--might enjoy it quite a bit.

P.P.S. I am in a very public busy coffee shop and simultaneously typing words like "cock ring," repeatedly referring to the Good Vibrations site and trying to manipulate the photos above in an innocuous manner. In front of me sit a table of four policemen. Am I breaking the law? I hope not, as the bagels are pretty good here. All I can do is hope that those around me think I'm posting something about the latest dog toys. Ack! Old people just sat next to me. "Oh, I see they have chicken soup here," the woman tells her husband in a wholly uninteresting fashion. Can't...angle....screen...far...enough...away...from...them. Gotta go!

Monday, September 6, 2010

It's ridiculously easy to get in good with In Bed With Married Women. Here's how:

1. Comment freely and often. It's the variety of voices and opinions that make it interesting around here. And, don't worry, if you're a big wuss, you can always comment anonymously.

2. Donate using the terrifically handy "Donate" button there in the right margin. It's like I'm your barista and you're tipping me, except I don't give you any coffee. (Please donate, please oh please oh please. I don't want to stop doing In Bed get a job as a stinkin' technical writer. Um, no offense to technical writers. You keep up the good work!)

3. Become a fan of In Bed With Married WomenFacebook page. (And recommend it to your friends if you're feeling especially gregarious.)

4. Tell your friends about the blog. Cult followings are cool, but not when it's you with the cult following.

5. Share your story. Tell us about your worst sexual experience, that time you did it with a panda and a mountain goat, your best lover ever--whatever, we're into it.

And finally, if you're too damned lazy to do any of the above, here's one super-easy, no-skin-off-your-back way to contribute financially (see above: technical writer, fear of becoming) are:

6. Use the links on the In Bed With Married Women page to purchase your various and sundry sex paraphernalia from super cool, eco-friendly, pro-sex San Francisco company, Good Vibrations. Which, my friend, is about as win-win as you can get.

About Me

I write In Bed With Married Women, a blog about sex in all its boring, strange, funny, smokin' hot glory. My work has also appeared in Salon, AlterNet, Cosmopolitan, Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, Jezebel, Mad, Games and the Los Angeles Times. I look grumpy in all pictures whether grumpy or just kinda neutral.